Trying to Determine Whether the Tyreek Trade Was Worth It

The Miami Dolphins officially have released the explosive wide receiver

Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill (10) leaves the field after the team lost against the Indianapolis Colts at Lucas Oil Stadium in the 2025 season opener. | Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images

The Miami Dolphins made it official Monday afternoon when they're moving on Tyreek Hill, announcing that they have released him with a failed physical designation.

But now that the Hill chapter is over for the Dolphins, how should it be viewed?

The move will save the team $23 million of cap space (though he still will count $28 million against the cap in 2026).

This is a move that almost inevitably still would have happened even if Hill didn't sustain that catastrophic knee injury in the Monday night victory against the New York Jets last Sept. 30.

The injury was significant enough that the question of whether Hill ever will be able to regain his speed and quickness is legitimate, as it the question of whether he'll be ready at the start of the 2026 season, if at all next season.

The move, though, was about clearing cap space and moving on for a very expensive player.

HILL'S HIGHLIGHTS

Now that the move is official, Hill is a free agent and able to sign with another team even before the start of the new league year.

There was an awful lot of production on the field, along with a lot of headaches off it.

We can start with the positive, and those would be the two 1,700-yard receiving seasons that Hill produced in 2022 and 2023 when he was named team MVP by the South Florida media.

If not for a high ankle sprain that limited him in the final month of the 2023 season, Hill very well might have become the first NFL player to reach 2,000 receiving yards in a season, which might have given him a strong case for league MVP.

The Dolphins offense those two seasons were among the most prolific for the organization in a long, long time and, make no mistake, Hill who was the biggest contributor — and not by a small margin.

Along with his production, Hill provided a whole lot of space for the passing game with his mere presence and all the attention he got from opposing defenses scared of his ability to beat them over the top.

Hill's speed and quickness also allowed him to get open and convert third-down situations with regularity in those first two years.

HILL'S LOWLIGHTS

The production went down the past two seasons, though, because of several factors, most notably defenses doing a better job of taking him out of the game and, obviously, injuries.

Hill dealt with several different issues in 2024 and his production dipped, and he was off to an uninspiring start this past season before he sustained that nasty-looking injury against the Jets.

But the biggest disappointments of Hill's time in Miami were the constant headlines for things having nothing to do with on-field issues.

Those are pretty well documented by now — the marina incident, the domestic abuse allegations, being detained before the 2024 season opener, his infamous comments after the season finale against the Jets — and it's pretty safe to suggest the Dolphins kept him around as long as they did because they decided his production was worth the aggravation, embarrassment, frustration, whatever term you want to use.

But we've arrived at a stage where there is no longer any justification for carrying him and his $51 million cap number on the roster, or even carrying him on the roster at all given all the baggage that comes with him.

FINAL VERDICT ON THE HILL TRADE

To get Hill, let's remember the Dolphins gave the Kansas City Chiefs five draft picks: a No. 1, No. 2 and No. 4 in 2022, and a No. 4 and No. 6 in 2023.

Beyond that, the Dolphins gave Hill a massive extension after acquiring him in 2022, then restructured his contract in 2024 to give him more money and more guarantees.

It was part of the Dolphins' spending spree of 2024 that, no other way to say it, backfired spectacularly and left the organization in rebuilding mode where it's dumping veterans left and right at the start of this offseason.

In retrospect, it's easy to knee-jerk an assessment of the trade with Kansas City and call it a failure because the Dolphins are in worse shape now than they were in February of 2022, but it wouldn't be fair.

Hill was the most dynamic playmaker the Dolphins had in decades, if not ever, and he was the one most responsible for the explosive offense of 2022 and 2023 that led the team to back-to-back playoff appearances for the first time in 20 years.

But Hill's arrival also caused Mike McDaniel to shift gears from a run-oriented attack to one that featured the outside speed because he basically had no choice — why trade for Hill if he's not going to be featured? — and that approach always had limitations.

If not limitations, that style of offense reduces the margin for error because it doesn't tend to play well in the cold or late in the season when NFL games are a lot more physical.

It's also easy to look at the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl in the first two seasons after they traded Hill to suggest it was a mistake trading for him.

This is kind of like assessing a draft pick three, four, five years after the fact where it's not always as simple as a player being a hit or a bust.

It's impossible to call the Hill trade a hit, but it's also not right to call it a bust.

Let's just say it's probably a move the Dolphins would think twice about doing if they were given a chance to go back in time.